


turned bare

by Imprise



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Afghanistan, Letters, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stream of Consciousness, Vietnam War, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 05:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10960746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imprise/pseuds/Imprise
Summary: A rambling, tactile narrative from John's strange mind, addressed to Sherlock and rife with references to touch, war and specific madnesses.





	turned bare

**Author's Note:**

> This fic doesn't have plot or sense. I wrote it without any intention of publication, and there are no characters in it. It's what I felt could have leaked out from John's distorted mind if he'd had a very different lot in life, if he'd known about Sherlock when he'd gone to war, or if he'd remembered war in an odder way after he'd come across Sherlock and then slurred it all together in writing.

It’s very dark and very ugly. I’m bent over a small thing which is bent over a smaller one and writing like a weird hermit in the night. Right now it’s lonely but not for long, you can’t believe how it feels to live 1969 – to be out here and exposed in only mild solitude, not knowing if it’s dire, not knowing if it will ever come time to be something else. I know it's over already, you don't have to tell me; you've held my letters until it was time. I love you. I feel your pulse, too, your blood like a second heart, I like the aliveness of it, I'm always a little quiet inside. This is a love letter like no other now that I'm out of the woods, your mouth is like water - it's warm like water - I want you to know me again, I'm bruised and lonely, Sherlock, I'm terribly alone. I bet you kept those damn letters, the ones where I talked about death. You could hold my thighs down forever and I wouldn't care, my hands have grown catlike,

but I loved war, Sherlock, and I still wanted to get out of there. It’s a little familiar, the way we are as well, and I've torn my lips to bits again like always. I can't write when I'm in my right mind. Did you know I can't drink? I can't drink, Sherlock, 

the last time I spread my fingers there was wine. I couldn't go through with that, I've eaten animals, I've eaten animals in the jungle fog: Everything was thick and pressed up against me very badly. You know how you can't see the stars when it's all close and damp? I wanted them to slice into me like razor blades, cold as ice, as distant as the damn Aurora Borealis. I'd sooner have looked into your eyes.

Yes, the heat became an obsession and I wanted my skin to go. I thought it would look good boiled and pink, swabbed off my white flesh like scales. We'd been eating so much fish. They tasted like river water, which tasted like muck, which tasted like dead bodies. The whole country tasted like dead bodies. I want you to kiss my cornea.

The left one. Did you know I got shot on that side, and the bullet ate through me like a monk? I've never even been to Vietnam. Sherlock, they sent me to Afghanistan - I was born in the seventies with a gun. I was left-handed. I knew how to sing. Sherlock I went to the desert, not the woods - Sherlock I'd have been lucky to sleep. The sky was frosted over with suns in the deep night, black as tar, like crude oil made watchful. There was too much oil in the brush. I wished for wetlands and crawfish, Sherlock I had nothing else but time. We killed people constantly. I rubbed my gun-barrel till it shone. It gleamed hard in the morning mist and the night, but especially in the night, I was cold and wanted your hand. I dreamt you crept into my cot and fucked me, hard, so I saw different stars than my own. I dreamt you touched my scars.

Afghanistan was wicked. I don't know why I mentioned Vietnam. They're two very different wars, you know, feelings all sorts of strange. I feel the itch of a suntan in the hot sand with Afghanistan, its language harsh and guttural. I would've liked to have heard their poetry. The language of Vietnam is dead. 

But you don't like to touch, do you? I forget how you touch all alone like that. I never let anyone else fuck me, I couldn't look into their eyes. God bless you, Sherlock, you're the only man who'd think I could've been to Iraq. I was quite obviously not alive. Fuck, I'm pretending, good God I'm pretending, Sherlock you must have no patience for this I don't fucking believe in God. I've been lying about the war for days. It's in each of those letters I don't remember which one, I need you to touch me Sherlock, I can't tell time. You used to have such terrible ways of saying my name. I need to be called John Watson again. I can't stand my own mind.

I'd like to be given a gun. I want to hold it hard in my palm, to feel the hilt beat inside it like a hammer. I’m not fighting other people anymore, but I don’t know if there isn’t any war, so now I want you to promise me something. Me, John Watson, not John the soldier or John your lover, but the man you once saw almost die, the man who would give his life for you, John Watson. Don't burn these letters, Sherlock. No matter what happens, don't burn them. They're all that's left of me in the night out here. I write to you because there's nothing else, because they've shelled out the worst parts of me and I am soft as an oyster. I write to you through acres of salt. You know that I'm lying and there's nothing soft, but you'll hold a fluted wrist against my dying hand and feel my forehead for fever. I don't have one, but I'm going mad in the desert heat. At night the sand's cold and sticks my ankles and bruises like a scythe. I miss the rapturous beat of the jungle, Sherlock. Please keep my letters for me.

 


End file.
